Billy Ray Chitwood

Billy Ray Chitwood, a hill boy from Tennessee, came out of Appalachia and into an adult world that added to the confusion of a transient life he left behind. Behind him, there were the sad disconnect with a broken family, bad economic times, much mobility, and so many mixed emotions that confounded the youth. Ahead, the adult world was a maze of neon glitter, gin mills, pretty ladies, and so much to absorb. It would be accurate and honest were it said that the author ate some emotional soup in his childhood and has spent a lifetime trying to digest it.

Through the years, the author has made his mistakes, taken his risks, and has been forever searching for some elusive ’white buffalo’ that could make sense of his wanderlust life. These elements are there in the books he has authored, in the characters, in the action and scenes portrayed, and in the musing quality of his narrative style. These elements can be heard in the songs he has written. He has had despair and sorrow. He has had great moments of joy and happiness. His life is likely not so different from every man.

He has proudly and honorably served his country in the United States Navy. He made it to college graduation with a BA degree in English. He taught high school ‘Advanced Writing’ and subsequently worked for major textbook publishers. He has owned and run a business. He has acted in film, stage, television, and has been a model. He has lived in California and Arizona for the major part of his adult life.

He currently resides on The Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee where he writes his books, enjoys from his bluff the beautiful views across the valleys. He sips and sits and muses as he gazes out to the horizon where the sky meets the green earth. With him is a cherished wife named Julie Anne and a Bengal cat named George, a feisty fur-ball full of love.

What Happens Next? A Life's True Tale

Memoir

A non-fictional memoir that covers the author's time in East Tennessee and his whirlwind education in the big world of neon lights, gin mills, pretty ladies, acting, television, stage, and film.

It is also a book that takes a remarkably honest look at some mistakes and triumphs. It is a story that has depth beneath the glitter of shiny piano bars and lovely women, beneath a family disconnect and sorrowful musings.

The book reveals the author's relationships in his life, the lamenting moments of despair and loneliness, the never-ending search for meaning, his faith, and the brutal assessments of who he really is. It has the family disconnect, even murder and suicide, and there is always a candor that is both refreshing and shocking in its self-analyses.

In the end, it is likely a bio not so different from everyman... just changes in circumstance and event.

The Cracked Mirror - Reflections Of An Appalachian Son

Fictional Memoir (mostly true)

"The Cracked Mirror, Reflections of an Appalachian Son" is about a Tennessee boy who ate some emotional soup and spent a lifetime trying to digest it.

It is the story of a young man leaving east Tennessee and going in search of himself, unprepared for the adult world he is about to enter. Behind him, and, within him, is the emotional debris of his childhood: abuse, broken family, and a substantial part of his soul. Searching for his identity in 'isms' and bars, he stumbles, gets up, only to find in the end that legacy and meaning are elusive, a 'white buffalo' always somewhere in the shadows.

"The Cracked Mirror, Reflections of an Appalachian Son" is largely a true story of the author's own life, a mirror of his past, cracked with the stress of all his memories: a family broken apart by their Appalachian circumstances and the 'great depression;' a childhood tainted by a father's abusive nature; an impetuous marriage and a sorrowful divorce; a subsequent search of 'isms,' for love and meaning in California and Arizona gin mills; a tableau of horrible events, including a senseless family murder, suicide, and a desert survival.

"The Cracked Mirror, Reflections of an Appalachian Son," is the story of a fictional Prentice Paul Hiller, his life, his heritage, his mistakes, the events that have come to shape him, and the demons within that he cannot dispel. Along the way, he gives his passionate and provocative views on criminal justice, love, politics, religion, war, and his favorite writers. In the end he finds a new love, some hope for redemption, some semblance of meaning and legacy.

The author's own family roots trace back to the eleventh century in Chetwode, a lovely hamlet north of London, England.

Mama's Madness

Crime Fiction

"It is a piteous whimper, lost in the black void of the narrow closet. The weak and eerie sound of her own voice chills her more than the cold …"

Inspired by a California newspaper account some years ago, this novel has truth along with the author's embellishment. It is dark and ugly, like the black closet used for punishment by a malevolent mother whose heart and mind can only know evil. It is poignant and sad in the penning, to know that such cruelty and debasement can exist in one family. From the black closet to fiery murder in the high Sierras, this shocking tale will scar the soul.

Butterflies And Jellybeans - A Love Story

A lightning strike brings two people together to fall in love. Jason Prince and Jenny Mason know their hearts are in tune, but fate has always a card to play in the game of romance.

This old fashioned love story provides some curves and dips along the road of romance: a brother's deception, a gambling habit out of control, and a grandmother's painful secret. It will take a death, a matriarch's great will, an Arizona dust storm, and a long wandering desert rebirth to bring the love story to its 'old fashioned' happy ending.

An Arizona Tragedy - A Bailey Crane Mystery (Book 1)

Mystery/Fictional Crime

Meet Bailey Crane, a transplanted son of the south with Cherokee blood and some emotional baggage. Bailey is an auxiliary detective, has a manufacturing rep business that brings in easy money, and he's a part-time actor. Bailey's got golf, love, money, friends, and a great life style. He has an amusing personality. He's a rowdy good looking rogue who wears his feelings in his eyes and on his lips, not at all reluctant to share his world.

A lovely young model and mother is brutally murdered in the Arizona desert northeast of Phoenix. The lady was Bailey's friend and her homicide begins an adventure for our sleuth that will take him down the halls of our nation's capital where he will discover that fact and fiction are strange bedfellows. Chased by an unknown stalker with a gun, Bailey is a marked man. Wounded, his body battered and bruised, his anger pushes onward until the puzzle pieces begin to form a picture. The exciting climax has a unique twist, and our musing son of the south does not quite know it but the ending is also a beginning.

The book was inspired by the actual murder many years ago of the author's friend and fellow actor.

Satan's Song - A Bailey Crane Mystery (Book 2)

Mystery/Fictional Crime

A young woman is murdered in a most gruesome way. The authorities have no viable leads. Bailey Crane is sought out by the victim's desperate mother who must know the awful truth of her daughter's death, who must come to some gauzy closure.

Homicides of young women in other states arouse Bailey's interest and provide a trail that will lead him to physical and psychological challenges that shake and rearrange his relatively sane world. The bizarre ending comes in a small mountain town in Colorado.

Our always musing southern sleuth will find a very personal and sacred part of his life coming to it's own end point. There is emotional pain and there is a new beginning for our endearing Tennesss Sherlock with the Cherokee blood.

The Brutus Gate - A Bailey Crane Mystery (Book 3)

Mystery/Fictional Crime

This tale begins with a raging warehouse fire that nearly consumes our southern sleuth with the Cherokee blood. A suspect arrested in connection to the fire is overheard muttering a cryptic phrase, 'beware The Brutus Gate'.

The fire and the phrase is the start point of this story about drugs, murder, rape, and political corruption at government's elite levels. Bailey Crane and his Phoenix PD buddies have a chuckle about the pithy 'Brutus Gate' remark and the adventure begins. Our Sherlock hero gets bounced around by the criminal elements and by his own personal demons of guilt and remorse --- all standard fare for the Tennessee man of endless mind queries about his emotions and the state of his life.

The action is keen, and the climax comes at an old ranch on the Mexican border just south of Yuma, Arizona. This is likely a romp you don't want to miss.

Murder In Pueblo Del Mar - A Bailey Crane Mystery (Book 4)

Mystery/Fictional Crime

An Arizona wife and mother is murdered while on holiday in Mexico, and her three children find her brutally beaten and slashed body. Bailey Crane, an auxiliary member of the Phoenix PD is visiting close friends in Pueblo del Mar, and is asked by the local police chief to assist him in building his case against the transsexual lover of the victim's husband. Bailey's Cherokee blood comes to an emotional boil when family and friends get caught up in the web of corruption, drugs and sex. The highly intense climax comes in a 'Whale Shack' on the scrub brush and sand near the Sea of Cortez. This tale has the always soulful musings of our southern Sherlock, a chance encounter with a mysterious mystic who shares his thoughts on Time and Place and fragile nerves that get edgy and frayed. This tale was inspired by an actual murder some years ago, and you don't want to miss it.

(HERE ARE A FEW LINES FROM THE PROLOGUE)...

Although he had an ominous expectation of what he would find, he could not have prepared himself for the scene in front of him, six feet from the door.

Bob Geraint tightly closed his eyes but he could still see the woman sprawled sideways across the king size bed, deep bloody indentations along her hairline, her right hand palm upward as though pitifully pleading for a mercy denied her. The left arm and hand, at an odd limp angle, rested on a naked breast. The chest was punctured savagely, oozing the dark red viscid juices that had been her life...

A Soul Defiled - A Bailey Crane Mystery (Book 5)

Mystery/Fictional Crime

Bailey Crane is thinking long term fun and sun on the Sea of Cortez, but an old friend and HOA president puts those thoughts on hold by enlisting our southern sleuth to help solve a case of missing money and murder. Bailey is kidnapped twice, beaten twice, and his anger management is nowhere to be found. With the help of Pueblo del Mar's police chief, another old friend, Bailey begins to connect the dots. He meets a most unusual man of intrigue, discovers the intricasies of money laundering in the posh resort communities along the sea, and makes it through to a most bizarre ending. The climax of this mystery leaves Bailey emotionally drained as he contemplates the true essence of friendship and life's strange twists of fate. It's all here: disloyalty, greed, love, money manipulation, murder. All the action takes place along a most lovely stretch of cobalt sea and an unrelenting desert of cacti, sage, and sand.

(A FEW LINES FROM THE PROLOGUE)... When he fell to the sand on his knees Fernando Cervantes thought for a brief moment he had gone down from a sharp chest cramp. His unsold serapes were involuntarily flung outward onto the beach. He felt liquid flowing through his fingers, saw the liquid when he pulled his hand from his left rib cage. He saw that it was his blood. As he collapsed on his side in the sand, his life presented itself to him in a few gasping breaths. As he slowly rolled onto his back, his half-closed eyes looked upward toward a diminishing blue sky. There was so much he wanted to tell Father Umberto, so much he yet wished to share with his family, but all he could weakly mutter in his last moment was, “Mi Dios, por favor me perdona para he pecado!" Clusters of sea gulls gathered near the lifeless body of Fernando Cervantes, indifferent, unimpeded in their ageless habits.

The Reluctant Savage

Mystery - Romance - Suspense

High school sweethearts, Billy Jay Campbell and Marcie Dangino reunite after many years apart. They discover the fire of their young love still glows brightly. With the Air Force behind him, Billy now works as an investigator for a law firm.

Two problems threaten to spoil his homecoming. Marcie is now married to a junior partner at Clarkson and Dangino, a firm that has occasionally employed him for their investigative work. The second problem occurs when Billy's close friend and boss is murdered.

The Reluctant Savage follows a mystery that connects murder, romance, and a love triangle.

Joe Public's Political Perspective

Government & Politics "Joe Public's Political Perspective" is a book of observations from a US citizen who does not apologize for his conservative leanings. However, the author of this book understands that one political party does not hold all the answers to critical issues facing our nation. The current Democratic president, his administration and Democratic-controlled Senate have created in this person's opinion many problems in a number of areas.

The author could be accused of ranting and raving as he comments on some of our very important issues. While members of both parties without question have contributed to costly legislation, too much wasteful spending, an entitlement mentality, this current president, his liberal supporters, and his his entire administration have been evasive, inept, irresponsible, and continually in a campaign mode...in short, the American people have not been served well by the people they elected to serve them.

The most egregious problem this administration has created is the Affordable Care Act, or, the euphemistically labeled 'Obamacare'. The author believes this act does more to harm our way of life than any piece of legislation in our history. The act was created in a shadowy 'supremacy' of liberal leaders of Democrat-persuasion, thousands of pages of costly mandates, little understood at its initial stages and likely not read by very many of the people in congress who work for us. As most people will know by now, the ACA had a woe begotten launch and will likely lead to doctor shortages, and costly insurance premiums. There is no doubt in the author's mind that this law is a precursor to 'Single Payer' healthcare.

The author writes about the ACA and many other subjects that face our country - Education and its all powerful union, The war on terror, religion, the economy, and others.

There is no claim in the author's comments to any political expertise. He has lived a long life, has seen many political turnovers in power. He is, like so many others, concerned about the future direction of this great nation and felt the need to make his observations known.

The author has written this book because he cares about the United States and its future. He does not wish to see further erosion to the ideals most Americans hold dear - Freedom - Liberty - The Pursuit of Happines

A Common Evil - A Bailey Crane Mystery (Book 6)

Mystery, Suspense

Former sleuth Bailey Crane and lovely wife Wendy are enjoying their penthouse pleasures until a cartel sting operation at their Mexican resort brings chaos and emotional uncertainty into a blurry reality. Wendy is kidnapped, and Bailey faces the demons running loose in his mind as he struggles with his choices. Also President of the resort's HOA, Bailey has not only kidnapping and murders with which to contend, but other problems which add to this suspenseful chapter in his life. The surprising end point brings back to Bailey and Wendy those memories better left in the memory vault. An exciting, intense thriller in the sand and cacti of Mexico's Sonoran desert by the beautiful Sea of Cortez. This is the final Book 6 of 'The Bailey Crane Mystery Series'.